God Loves A Sucker

Lifewise is in a state of alarm over candy.

We need to have a long talk about Lifewise some time, a company that is making hay out of an Ohio law that says schools must let students out to attend church lessons-- a sort of Skip School For Jesus. It's a chance for conservative christianists to recruit children right out of school, and make a ton of money while doing it. Lifewise sets up a site for church school, and buses students to it and back during the school day (and if that sounds like a terrible idea, it is, but we'll talk about that another day).

It's one more way to try to work around the wall between church and state, but it turns out that Lifewise needs the use of a particular tool, and they grump when they can't have it.

Candy.

Well, candy and toys. Turns out that students who skip out for church time come back to school with "candy, stickers, or tchotchkes." and Lifewise attorney Jeremy Dys says that some schools are forbidding this. You know-- in the same way that schools don't allow candy and toys during the day because it's disruptive and troublesome. All over the country you'll find schools where students can't even bring in cupcakes for their birthday because of health policies.

But attorney Dys says forbidding students to bring back the trinkets from their Lifewise session-- well, "that’s restricting free speech and denying students their religious liberty." And he feels strongly enough about it to threaten "some very serious litigation that is not going to be fun for anybody."

Dys is an attorney at First Liberty, yet another of those right wing legal shops dedicated to imposing christinist political beliefs on everyone.

The point here, of course, is that promising the students treats if they attend the Lifewise program is an important part of the recruitment process. Maybe the argument is that God really loves a sucker and Jesus has commanded His people to hand out lots of stickers, but I can't say I've ever seen either idea crop up in the scripture, and I'd personally rather not see my church resorting to the same recruitment techniques as creepy guys in vans.

If Lifewise has a message that is just as powerful and uplifting and life-improving as they claim, surely they don't need to add candy and treats to sell it.